The first thing you’ll do after you install WordPress is choose a blog theme. If you are going to have a developer help you with your blog at any point, choosing a good theme can also mean money if your developer is charging by the hour. You want a theme that not only looks good but also is easy for your developer to customize. Here are a few themes that I rate highly in aesthetics and ease of customization. These are developer-friendly themes, so to speak.
- Sadish Bala, owner of WordPress Rocks, is an excellent coder. And his themes look great too.
- Chris Pearson has some very clean, nicely coded themes. The Thesis Theme is premium, but his others are are free.
- Magazine Themes deserve a post of their own, but my personal favorite is The Morning After by Arun Kale. If you’re not into the default masculine images and colors, that’s easily modified, as you can see from my very girly Girlebooks site which uses this theme.
- DailyWP has some nice free themes as well as some premium ones. While I don’t like the colors on the Brightness Theme too much, it has an interesting magazine layout including categories. The Portfolio Theme is another good one.
- Down there at the very bottom of your theme gallery is Very Plain Text. A lot of the minimalist themes just turn out boring. Not this one. There are some basic options that you can manipulate through the WordPress admin like typography, font size, layout widths and sidebar alignment.
Want a longer list? Check out the list from BestWPThemes.com divided into single, double and 3-column layouts. While I haven’t worked at all the themes there, it looks like a pretty solid list. However I disagree with their raves about K2, which I found the hardest theme to work with thus far.
If you have found a theme you love but aren’t sure about it’s inner workings, let me know, and I’ll respond with my comments.